Apple threatened Elon Musk to remove Grok and X from the App Store due to sexually explicit deepfakes.

Developers were forced to change their apps

Grok is a generative AI chatbot built by Elon Musk’s xAI. Launched in late 2023, it was integrated into the social network X (formerly Twitter) and marketed as a wittier, less “politically correct” alternative to ChatGPT.

Apple has told US senators how it worked behind the scenes to address a surge of sexualised deepfakes generated by Grok earlier this year.

Earlier this year, Apple came under intense pressure to remove the Grok and X apps from the App Store after users found the chatbot readily complied with requests to undress people in photographs-particularly women, including minors.

Apple largely stayed silent throughout the scandal. However, according to NBC News, the company privately “found that X and Grok violate its rules” and “privately threatened to remove” Grok from the App Store.

Apple “contacted the teams behind the X and Grok apps after receiving complaints and reviewing news reports about the scandal”, and demanded that the “app developers come up with a plan to improve content moderation”.

X then submitted an updated version of the Grok app for review, but it was rejected because “the changes were insufficient”. After that, Elon Musk’s company submitted revised versions of both the X and Grok apps-yet only one of them was approved.

Apple said in a letter: “Apple reviewed the following submissions made by the developers and determined that X largely addressed the violations, but that the Grok app continued to fall short. As a result, we rejected the Grok submission and notified the developer that further changes were required to resolve the violation, otherwise the app may be removed from the App Store. Following further engagement and changes made by the Grok developer, we determined that Grok had substantially improved and therefore approved its latest submission.”

Against the backdrop of the controversy over the chatbot producing intimate deepfake images, Musk’s xAI introduced restrictions at the start of the year limiting the ability to edit photographs of real people using Grok.

Previously, the authorities in Malaysia and Indonesia blocked Grok from operating within their countries.

Earlier, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that the authorities must “consider all options” at this time, including a potential ban on the X platform. The United Kingdom has also held talks with Canada and Australia about a possible ban on Elon Musk’s social network.